Travel Assistance Device (TAD)

For individuals with intellectual disabilities, it is especially daunting to plan and execute a trip via public transportation without any personal assistance, especially on their first few trips. Transit agencies are also frequently overwhelmed with the cost of providing paratransit (i.e., door-to-door) service (~$22 per trip) when a rider cannot use regular fixed-route transit services (~$2.75 per trip). Paratransit can also be limiting to riders, since advance registration of 24 hours is often required to book trips and there are often large waiting times. Therefore, it is in the interest of both the transit rider and the transit agency to support technologies that can aid individuals to travel independently using fixed-route public transportation.

The Travel Assistance Device (TAD) is a mobile application for global positioning system (GPS)-enabled cell phones that helps new transit riders navigate the public transportation system. TAD prompts the rider in real-time with a recorded audio message (e.g., “Get Ready” and “Pull the Cord Now!”), visual images, and vibration alerts when the rider should pull the stop request cord to exit the bus. Personalized trips are planned for each traveler using the TAD web page. Automated alarms can be triggered and the travel trainer and/or parent/guardian remotely alerted in case a rider wanders off their pre-determined path. Traditional phone communication is possible between the rider and the trainer allowing them to guide the rider to the correct location if they are lost.

Another research project, funded by the Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis (IDEA) program of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in 2009, demonstrated that additional features, such as displaying estimated arrival time in the cell phone application while the user is waiting for the bus to arrive, could be added to the TAD system through integration with a transit agency’s Automated Vehicle Location (AVL) system (also tested in Tampa, FL). The basic features of TAD that instruct the user when to exit the bus, however, do not require AVL, only a GPS-enabled cell phone.

In 2010, USF completed a follow-up project funded by FDOT and NCTR which successfully tested deployments of TAD in Miami-Dade,Broward, Sarasota, and Pinellas counties in Florida. USF developed a software tool to import each agency’s General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data in order to automatically add and update transit data for each public transportation system, a critical feature for TAD deployments to many different cities. Using off-the-shelf GPS-enabled phones with the TAD mobile application, each participating agency was able to successfully receive the prompts to exit the bus at the expected locations.

The USF Florida Mental Health Institute recently performed the first research study which examined the actual impact of TAD on the bus riding behavior of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Professor Ray Miltenberger encouraged Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Master’s student Arica Bolechala to take on this study as her thesis research project. Bolechala’s thesis demonstrated that when the participants used TAD, they were always successful in exiting the bus at the correct location. When the participants did not use TAD, the individuals were not able to exit the bus at the correct bus stop. Bolechala’s work was presented at the 2011 TRB Conference in January in Washington, D.C. and the 2011 Applied Behavior Analysis International 37th Annual Conference in Denver, CO in May 2011.

USF is still actively involved in efforts surrounding TAD and is currently planning the next set of TAD research projects. Please contact us if you have research ideas for TAD or wish to collaborate with our research team.

USF is also seeking partners to commercialize the TAD technology. Please contact us if you are interested.

Benefits of TAD:

Potential benefits of TAD include:

increased transit ridership

decreased costs to the transit agency by shifting some riders from paratransit to fixed route transit

increased independence and improved quality of life for transit riders

increased productivity of transit agencies’ travel trainers whose sole job is to provide one-on-one instruction for new riders or existing paratransit riders on how to use fixed-route transit.

Many have endorsed the TAD project during its lifetime. In 2009, TAD was recommended by the Florida Governor’s Commission on Disabilities as a ““proposed implementation strategy to eliminate barriers to pedestrians with disabilities and make bus travel accessible for people with disabilities to facilitate access to mass transportation services.” TAD is also recognized as “State-of-the-Art” for human assistance in the USDOT-RITA Volpe Center’s upcoming report on “Traveler Information Systems and Wayfinding Technologies in Transit Systems,” and was presented as a “cutting edge” transit wayfinding technology in the Easter Seals Project ACTION “Research Today to Increase Accessibility Tomorrow: The Cutting Edge of Wayfinding Technology” webinar in April 2011.

While riders with intellectual disabilities are the initial target market for this application, TAD could be used by any traveler. Navigating the transit system can also be a major obstacle for attracting new riders, especially for special needs populations and tourists. Approximately half of the general population surveyed can not successfully plan an entire trip on the fixed-route transit system using printed information materials.

Sean J. Barbeau and Mark Sheppard. “The Travel Assistance Device: Using GPS-enabled Cell Phones To Aid Transit Riders with Special Needs” at the Eight Annual National Conference for the Association of Travel Instructors (ATI) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. August 15th, 2008.

Sean J. Barbeau, James Fozard, William Kearns, “Implications of Rapidly Evolving Gerontechnologies for High Speed Networks,” Proceedings of the Fall 2007 Internet2 Member Meeting, San Diego, California, October 9, 2007.

Sean J. Barbeau, “Digital Travel Assistant: A Potential Technology Application to Assist Transit Riders with Special Needs” at the Fifth Annual National Conference for the Association of Travel Instructors (ATI) in Seattle, WA. August 12th, 2005.